Cosumnes Phase 2

Collaborators

Project Description

Cosumnes I focused primarily on the relationship between hydrologic conditions and aquatic ecosystems.

Cosumnes II, also funded by CBDA/CALFED, built on this earlier work, but emphasized the connection between aquatic and terrestrial systems in floodplain environments.

This project continued the monitoring of basic ecological and hydrological processes, but expanded to include investigations of: patterns of restoration success, groundwater and vegetation interaction, linking aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, bird populations as indicators of ecosystem integrity, and data management for ecosystem monitoring.

The Cosumnes 2 phase of the project ended in 2004. Reports and papers are posted within the report, and in the CRG2 Reports and Publications section.

Program

Central Valley Floodplains

Project Status

Completed

Products and Resources

The Role of Stochasticity and Priority Effects in Floodplain Restoration

This paper is a test of two widely held assumptions in the practice of riparian restoration: (1) if physical processes are restored, plant communities will naturally reassemble themselves, and (2) restored communities will resemble reference sites.

Aquatic-Terrestrial

The overall goal of Task 3 is to understand how the flood cycle influences the controls of primary and secondary production and how and to what degree this aquatic production supports consumers in riparian habitats.

Bird Populations

Riparian habitat in California is one of the most productive and valuable habitats for all forms of wildlife. Yet this is also one of the most threatened habitats, with only about 5% of the state’s original riparian habitat remaining.

CRG2 Reports and Publications

For a full list of reports and publications created during Cosumnes Phase 2, go here.

Data Management

In this thematic area of CRG Phase 2, we focused on three primary areas for data management: mapping, data integration, and digital repositories for long-term ecosystem monitoring.

Evapotranspiration in a Riparian Canopy

Our primary intent in this study was to measure riparian evapotranspiration at two different sites within the Cosumnes watershed.

Floodplain Monitoring

We reared juvenile Chinook salmon for two consecutive flood seasons within various habitats of the Cosumnes River and its floodplain (California) to compare growth rates of in river and newly created floodplain habitats.

Groundwater

This page summarizes and links to the major portions of the Groundwater Vegetation Interactions for Cosumnes Phase 2.

Groundwater Summary

The objective of this section was to develop a hydrologic model for a river-reach/floodplain area of the Cosumnes River and to provide quantitative analyses of many of the key characteristics governing perched groundwater hydrology.

Executive Summary

Floodplains are among the most productive and diverse ecosystems on Earth and are now being recognized globally for the ecosystem services they provide; however, they are also one the more impacted ecosystems globally and are at risk of further degradation by a fusillade of anthropogenic stressors and consumptive demands.

Flood Regime

This page summarizes and links to the major portions of the Flood Regime analysis for Cosumnes Phase 2.

Flood Regime - Variability

The objective of this section was to characterize the variability of the lower Cosumnes River and develop a flood regime classification methodology.

Flood Regime - Water Chemistry

The objective of this section was to quantify the flux of nutrients and food resources across the channel-floodplain boundary and study the influence of the food pulse on the spatial distribution of suspended algal biomass across the surface of a restored floodplain.

Flood Regime Characterization (FRC) for Matlab

This program is an attempt to transform the methods discussed in the companion paper into a portable computer program so that they can be used by researchers and managers on other watersheds in order to characterize a flood regime.

Floodplain Restoration

To better understand how restoration of riparian vegetation is influenced by a variety of factors, such as physical processes, especially inundation, and the multiple methods of restoration (both active and semi-passive) that land managers have used in the Cosumnes floodplain, we developed four complementary approaches to addressing different facets of assessing restoration outcomes.